The Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C, bills itself as a “libertarian think tank:” but its conception of libertarianism is one that many of us will find surprising. Jerry Taylor, the founder and president of the Center, in an article of March 10, “Do Libertarians Want Freedom or Not?” argues that libertarians ought to be sympathetic to welfare
In a clever post on his blog for June 21, 2011, Brad DeLong offered a reconstruction of Robert Nozick’s political philosophy. He claimed that “to successfully explain Nozickian political philosophy is face the reality that it is self-parody.” Hence only liberals like himself could explain it, because anyone who grasps the structure of the argument
[ Lincoln’s Political Thought , by George Kateb. Harvard University Press, 2015. Xv + 236 pages] In a famous speech, delivered in Springfield in 1858, Lincoln said that “a house divided itself cannot stand.” Lincoln of course applied the sentence to the American Union, which he doubted could long endure “half slave and half free.” George Kateb has
John V. Denson’s A Century of War (2006) is an important contribution to revisionist history. In the book, Judge Denson analyzes the provocative policies of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. Each of these presidents concealed from the public his bellicose intentions. The book attracted the attention of Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof,
[Excerpted from The Austrian .] Readers of Judge Napolitano’s outstanding book will at once be struck by its unusual title. What is the “suicide pact” referred to there? The phrase occurs in a famous dissenting opinion by Justice Robert Jackson. In Terminiello v. Chicago (1949), the Supreme Court held that the city of Chicago had wrongly
In an excellent article for The New Republic , April 6, 2015, “Rand Paul Will Break Republican Hearts, Just Like Reagan Did,” the Canadian journalist Jeet Heer displays a knowledge of libertarianism rare among mainstream journalists. Heer points out that Rand Paul’s bellicose foreign policy statements will make him lose support among
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.